“Find her, please, find her!” Nancy’s words were muffled and her voice broke as she began to sob.
“We will find her! We will,” Meg vowed.
At their feet, Killer—now Kelly—whined softly.
“Oh, silly me, crying when I’m sure everything’s going to be all right!” Nancy said. She eased away from Meg and plucked up the dog. “We’re going to be all right, Kelly. And don’t you worry. I’d keep you myself, but Meg says she’s coming back for you!”
Still holding the dog, she saw the two of them to the door. Matt shook her hand, sorry to see that tears were still brimming in her eyes. Meg hugged her a final time.
“You’ll keep in touch?” Nancy asked.
“Daily,” Meg replied.
Then they returned to the car.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Matt told her.
“What? I shouldn’t have said I’d keep in touch?”
“No. That we’d find her.”
“Why not?”
“You may not be able to keep that promise,” he said.
“But we will find her,” she said stubbornly. “Didn’t you tell me that?”
“Yes, I did tell you we might find her. I certainly haven’t given up hope. But it’s one thing for us to operate on that assumption and another for you to make unwarranted promises to a bereaved relative.”
She paused, scowling at him, her hands on her hips.
“Fine. Then I will find her.”
Matt went around to the driver’s side of the car. “Where are we going?”
“What?”
“Where are we going? This is your hunt, remember?”
She looked at him coolly and slid into the passenger seat. He realized she probably had no real idea. How did you hunt for a missing person who might have been abducted—or who might have gone into hiding?
She dug into her bag while he revved the car but remained parked. She brought out Lara’s Richmond journal and read aloud, “‘Sometimes I want to go back. Way back to the days of innocence when we truly believed. Follow the trail as Meg and I did when we were students. Richmond to Sharpsburg, on to Harpers Ferry where we were home, and Gettysburg, where we learned that ideals are everything, and that good men may fight for different causes.’”
She turned to him. “Hollywood Cemetery. One of her favorite places. It’s on...”
“I know where it is,” he said curtly. She closed the journal and he drove to the cemetery.
“I don’t really think she’d be hiding here, would she?” he asked.
Meg was gazing straight ahead. She didn’t reply.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes.” She turned again and looked at him. “No, she won’t be hiding there. She won’t be there if she’s...alive. But if she’s dead...” Her voice trailed off.
Matt wondered what she meant. That if Lara was dead she’d show herself to Meg in a place she loved?
*
Meg wasn’t sure what she was doing. If she was going to give any credence to the words in Lara’s journal, she had to think of them as a sort of map. And then, all she could do was follow that map—without really knowing if her friend was dead or alive.